MLK's birthday should be more than another day off

On Monday, millions of school children across the country will get a day off to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. While it is certainly right that we should pause to honor Dr. King, I think his birthday should represent more than just another day off. To truly honor the man, we should use the day to learn more about him and to put his guiding principles of non-violence into practice.
   There can be no denying that what King accomplished in just a dozen years was monumental. In that short time, he rose up and challenged the system of "separate but equal" legal segregation that had been in place for almost a century. Through his advocacy of non-violent civil disobedience, he broke the back of that corrupt system and shepherded through both the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Those two pieces of legislation finally made "Jim Crow" illegal and ushered in a new era of equality that had been unimaginable just a few years before. Clearly, he is a modern-day hero worthy of being celebrated.
   But the King that we celebrate today is far different than the real man. Today, he has become more myth than man. We regard him as some kind of modern saint, someone who spoke beautifully and lived some kind of blameless life. But did you know that King originally didn't even want to lead the Civil Rights movement? He tried to back out of organizing the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott that brought him to national prominence. Did you know that he was a bit of a womanizer who cheated on his wife, Coretta?
   King hardly was a saint. He was a man with his doubts and his human failings. He also was a man with extraordinary gifts of oratory and leadership, someone who stepped into a movement that was hungry  for a leader, who was in the right place at the right time.
    It's easy to raise King to the level of sainthood. What he accomplished was extraordinary, and he did die too young. One can only wonder what might have happened if he had survived. One wonders what he would have thought of everything that has happened since, what message he might have for us today. But to truly honor him, we need to put an end to Martin Luther King Jr. the Myth and learn about Martin Luther King Jr -- the Man. He wasn't a modern-day saint. He was an ordinary  man, one with both extraordinary gifts and ordinary flaws. It's those flaws -- the fact that he was just an ordinary man -- that make what he accomplished so very extraordinary.
   To honor the man, we also should put his principles of non-violent civil disobedience into practice, not just on his birthday, but every day. King accomplished a great deal, but there are many issues today that he could never have imagined. It's those issues -- the continued presence of racism and issues of racial profiling, among others -- that could benefit from King's non-violent philosophy.
    Dr. Martin Luther King was a great American, one worthy of our respect and honor. But we do him a disservice when we ignore the realities of his struggle in favor of perpetuating the modern-day myth.